What, no Korean War atrocity to report today?
In the NYT, Choe Sang-hun writes about former Korean prostitutes seeking compensation and an apology for government encouragement of prostitution outside US military bases:
South Korea has railed for years against the Japanese government’s waffling over how much responsibility it bears for one of the ugliest chapters in its wartime history: the enslavement of women from Korea and elsewhere to work in brothels serving Japan’s imperial army.
Now, a group of former prostitutes in South Korea have accused some of their country’s former leaders of a different kind of abuse: encouraging them to have sex with the American soldiers who protected South Korea from North Korea. They also accuse past South Korean governments, and the United States military, of taking a direct hand in the sex trade from the 1960s through the 1980s, working together to build a testing and treatment system to ensure that prostitutes were disease-free for American troops.
While the women have made no claims that they were coerced into prostitution by South Korean or American officials during those years, they accuse successive Korean governments of hypocrisy in calling for reparations from Japan while refusing to take a hard look at South Korea’s own history.
Well, I think the difference being that while the comfort women HAVE made claims (the merits of which I do not intend to discuss in this post) that they were coerced, you, on the other hand, admit to being paid prostitutes… which, last time I checked, does not get you compensation and an apology.
I did like this paragraph, though:
In some sense, the women’s allegations are not surprising. It has been clear for decades that South Korea and the United States military tolerated prostitution near bases, even though selling sex is illegal in South Korea. Bars and brothels have long lined the streets of the neighborhoods surrounding American bases in South Korea, as is the case in the areas around military bases around the world.
This, of course, is true — bars and brothels DO line the areas outside of US military bases in Korea. Just as tugjob joints and other places of ill-repute line entertainment districts and other shadier neighborhoods in population centers large and small throughout the entire country, a contextual fact you might think it important to note.
Naturally, the fact that the US military may have been involved in could warrant an apology and compensation… to the US taxpayer, if there are laws forbidding the use of taxpayer funds on projects related to activities deemed illegal in the United States (and I’m not sure if there are).
(HT to reader)
32 Comments
Being kidnapped and raped is not being coerced.
I think being kidnapped and raped is very much being coerced, but excuse me if I have made a bad semantic choice.
What jumped out at me was the part where the prostitutes, “accuse… [past ROK governments and USFK of] …working together to build a testing and treatment system to ensure that prostitutes were disease-free…”
Oh the humanity! What a horrible conspiracy.
The article goes on to say that the ROK encouraged prostitution because, “fears that the American military would leave”
I call Bullsh*t!!!!
I posit they encourged it for 2 reasons:
a) to bring in cash,
and
b) to lower the rate of what many Koreans still consider to be a threatening plague to their ‘pure-blooded’ society: interracial marriage.
My little flag says I’m Australian!!!
NO! I’m a Long Islander, who lives in Seoul.
oh man, this is too rich. I’m getting.. overloaded…
First, lets fix this to be more accurate:
And… prostitutes demanding compensation! HAHA! I think that if they want compensation they should just go about getting it the way they normally do. Or, or, they need to start some sort of community service in exchange, or, or, agg my head is bursting with retorts.
my bud in the army told me US army bases are well surrounded with whore houses. US whores. Illegal, I suppose.
he was struggling, because he was a Christian. The boys had nothing to talk about except sharing how good it was to bang a girl.
Army bases and whore houses seem to be a universal pair.
But, army bases and whore houses on the front-line of warfare?
Only the Japanese.
Japan is a world leader in pornography.
The people who popularized jacking off on the woman’s face after intercourse…
When I first saw that, I immediately felt that was probably dehumanizing for the woman, as dehumanizing as making a woman suck dick and train her to like it.
sick, sick, sick.
Larry Flynt, by the way, seemed to have had his first intercourse with a chicken. And killed the chicken.
This is the sort of beastiality that will become accepted in society, if we let marriage be redefined.
My generation is already brain washed and spiritless and faithless.
sick, sick, sick.
Fixed.
Could someone please tell this jackass “journalist” that prostitution was only illegal here like 5 or 6 years ago? Not 60?
I don’t know about that… I think prostitution was always illegal (in the modern context, that is). The difference a few years back (2004?) was that the country decided to strictly enforce the law. (I can hear the snickers now..)
A sad article of a sad time in Korea. Yes, the women were enslaved in very much the same way that Japan’s comfort women were enslaved, which was that they were enslaved by the use of debt and deception.
I was in the US navy stationed at Camp Humpheys, near Pyeongtaek, from 1977 to 1979. I was quite an active barhopper and whoremonger at the time and knew a lot of the women who worked in the ten or so large clubs outside the gates of Camp Humpheys. Here is what I remember:
Many of the girls at that time told me they were lured to the bars by ads in Korean magazines promising high-paying jobs as waitresses in military clubs. I read the magazine ads, myself.
The girls were also promised furnished apartments, which was how the girls became enslaved to their pimps, because, in addition to their rent, the girls were expected to make payments on the apartment furniture at exorbitant interest rates. I do not know if the clubowners and pimps explained interest rates to the girls or not, but I doubt that many did, and even if they did, I doubt that many of the girls knew what they were getting themselves into. At the time, many of the girls were literally right off the farm and were illiterate.
The girl’s salaries were not enough to pay all their expenses, so the girls had to start selling their bodies just to keep their heads above water. They could not walk or run away from their debt because the pimps and the police would hunt them down and bring them back after giving them a nice little beating.
The police, storeowners, and even other bargirls in the camptown were the watch dogs for the pimps, so it was hard for the girls to simply slip out of town. Even when the new girls went to one of the local bathhouses, they had to go with one of the pimp’s trusted girls to help make sure the girl did not run away.
Essentially, the only young women allowed in town were prostitutes and schoolgirls, and you could easily tell them apart because the schoolgirls had to wear uniforms.
If the police spotted a woman on the street they did not recognize, and she was not wearing a school uniform, they would stop her and demand that she show them her VD Card, which was a record of the woman’s visits to the veneral disease clinic. If you were a young woman in the village outside Camp Humphey’s, you either had to have a VD Card or a school ID showing that you attended one of the local schools. If you did not have a VD card or a school ID, you were taken to the local police station, which was a place the girls did not want to go because they were often abused there.
In other words, the only Korean women the American military were allowed to associate with in the village outside Camp Humphey’s were prostitutes. If a Korean girlfriend from Seoul visited you and she did not have a VD card, she would be hauled off to the police station and you would not be allowed to go with her.
US military police patroled with Korean military police, but I never saw them taking girls out of the clubs. I think they were only patroling to make sure there were no fights. I am not sure, but I think it was the plain clothes police who did all the dirty work.
I remember hearing about the “Monkey House,” which was basically a jail where the girls were treated for VD. I also heard it was not a pleasant place.
Korea was a whoremonger’s heaven in the 1970s and ’80s thanks to government-sponored, debt-based sexual slavery.
Yes, Koreans who complain about Japan’s World War II “comfort woman” system while ignoring their own “comfort woman” systerm are hypocrites.
Everybody in the world and/or their ancestors is a victim of some other group or entity, so the answer is for everyone on the planet to contribute $10,000 into the Global Victims Fund(tm), which fund will then distribute $9,950 to every man, woman and child on Earth, but only after they’ve signed a “I Will Stop Whingeing About My Victimhood” pledge. $45 goes to handling and $5 goes to me for thinking of the idea.
So how could someone who was NOT coerced into into the world’s oldest profession but did it of their own freewill now try and demand compensation?
Regardless of how one might view prostitution, this is ridiculous. This is the fallout governments should have expected by lumping all sex workers with the “Human Trafficking” label.
Claiming all sex workers are human trafficked is like saying all beef has the mad cow. But this is the wide paint brush being used today to portray the sex industry. By doing so, this enables past working girls to make such frivilous claims even though (for whatever reason) they elected to do so of their own accord.
I can’t wait to sue Burger King 25 years later for all the Whoppers I’ve eaten.
Near the bases? Actually there were prostitutes working and living ON most of the bases well into the late 80’s early 90’s.
Did I read this correctly? Prostitutes are demanding compensation because they were given medical attention?
I read a book about Bangkok, in which its citizen were said to view Westerners as walking slot machines. Just walk up and pull the lever, and money might pop out. Doesn’t matter how ridiculous your pitch is (”hey mistah, Thai beads, only ten dollahs!”) because eventually, one will pay out.
I’m starting to think that certain “citizen’s groups” here in the ROK have a similar perspective.
hardyandtiny: more details, please.
Granfallon (#14),
It was essentially illegal to have a veneral disease in the 1970s and ’80s because the girls were sent to jail while they received their treatment. That was the “monkey house” mentioned in the article.
It’s pretty well known that Yongsan Garrison sported a steam and cream until 1988 or thereabouts. I’ve heard two different stories regarding how it got shut down:
1) a general’s wife heard about it; and
2) a chaplain experienced it “firsthand.”
What’s the point of logging in and have a “moderated” forum, if off-topic, incindiary, and just plain stupid comments like #6* are allowed in. I’m not gonna bother to analyze his stupidity… but come on! Shouldn’t that guy be banned or something?
*”Larry Flynt, by the way, seemed to have had his first intercourse with a chicken. And killed the chicken.
This is the sort of beastiality that will become accepted in society, if we let marriage be redefined.
My generation is already brain washed and spiritless and faithless.
sick, sick, sick.”
#18, I have thought the same exact thing many times.
wjk? He’s the most entertaining poster at the hole.
You think that’s vile and twisted? Get a load of what he wrote a few threads back:
Englishmonkey,
I don’t think Mr. Flynt was married to the chicken, or even engaged.
It is strange how some people can easily and aggressively condemn Japan’s “comfort women” system while seeming unwilling to condemn Korea’s, even though both were very similar.
A friend and his Yongjugul Hollywood bride of 21 years finalized a divorce last year. I believe she was compensated quite well, with a house in Minnesota, a settlement to the tune of six figures, and a hefty child support to boot. And the thing of it is, it was his damn fault, no joke. She was as loyal and straight up as one could possibly be.
wjk — keep the Larry Flynt and the Chicken stories to yourself. Or at least in the Larry Flynt discussion.
#18: Believe it or not, there is some method to the madness. Some posters, however, due to seniority, get a degree of leeway. Kind of like the eccentric uncle you have to see at family gatherings. Everyone knows who they are, and the key is to ignore them until they say something worth responding to.
I think many of you old timers remember the steam-and-creams on base. I remember when I first signed on base at Camp Coiner one of the first things they did was suggest we go to the local steam-and-cream…..
@23: Well, it’s ALL bad.
The difference and the reason why the reaction may be different is because it was a foreign power (the government of Japan) that forced/tricked the young Korean girls into becoming sex slaves.
Think of it like this: Which people have killed more Americans than any other? Answer, fellow Americans. Who killed more of Uncle Sam’s people in their fight against the US government, 1) General Robert E. Lee or 2) Osama bin Laden? The former. Yet who do you think Americans (especially those from the South) hate more and who do they label as “evil”? Imagine if someone were to say to Americans, “You can’t hate Osama bin Laden (and al-Qaeda) for what he did! Look how you Americans have killed each other for centuries!” That would sound kind of silly, no? And don’t EVEN get me started on what Americans did to their own innocent fellow citizens like the native Americans, African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, etc. Yet this wouldn’t take away Americans’ right to be angry with Osama bin-Laden and Al-Qaeda, would it?
So your argument that Koreans should not complain about what a foreign power, meaning Japan THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN IN KOREA IN THE FIRST PLACE, did to them because of what Koreans may have done to each other is just as silly.
I’m a little confused. If the good ladies get compensated for their years of bad forced hooking at the hands of the evil government and their evil military allies, what happens to all the money they made while bad hooking? Does it suddenly become taxable? Will they set up a refunds booth at the bottom of hooker hill?
It’s rather suspicious, when you randomly think back to 2006, http://wiki.galbijim.com/Prostitution , 2004, http://metropolitician.blogs.c.....ights.html , and September, http://www.asianewsnet.net/new.....&sec=1 , and consider the amount of money going into this industry, year after year after year after year, that the people at the ground floor of this industry would, on their own, demand compensation.
Stinky, in the least.
what is the world coming to when I find myself actually agreeing with Gbevers…
The Korean government clearly had relationship with organized crime. You have to really wonder, how much government protection did Korean government give to the prostitutes?
We shouldn’t try to parallel this with the comfort women issue as I think it obscures the issue. Korean nationalist are going to say something along the line of “this isn’t like the comfort women blah blah blah”.
Does this mean those “glass houses” were really open to GIs?
hamel: It’s not something a lot of people don’t already know.
There were Korean prostitutes working on most of the US military bases in Korea from the 50’s through the 80’s. Most of the women working in the barber shops offered “specials”; blowjobs and handjobs in addition to haircuts. Many of the units had small unit bars and employed Korean barmaids/prostitutes. There were also large dance clubs on many of the bases that employed tons of Korean women who worked as go-go dancers, hostesses, waitresses, barmaids etc..and offered sexual services on the side. There were also women who would work in the barracks; all of the soldiers would pay a monthly fee which covered various services; boot shining, laundry, room cleaning, uniform pressing etc…and of course, if they felt the urge they could always pay extra for a blow job. Many of these women would live on the base in rooms they could find in the bars, barracks, etc..or sometimes they’d live in a soldier’s room. My first sergeant once told me that he would walk into his barracks in the 1970’s and it would be a cloud of marijuana smoke with Korean girlfriends and hookers running around half naked.
I guess working on the base as a pro was much better than being imprisoned in an off-base brothel.
Am I the only person getting worked up here?